The present invention relates to an information processing method and apparatus thereof which processes various processings by using an input character pattern.
Conventional input apparatus for inputting handwritten character patterns and drawings to a processor such as a computer, a coordinate input apparatus using various input pens, tablets, and digitizers is well known. Information on character patterns and drawings inputted from such coordinate input apparatus is displayed on a display apparatus such as a liquid crystal display and CRT display, or outputted to a recording apparatus such as a printer. Furthermore, the coordinate information representing the input handwritten character pattern is stored or displayed as corresponding coordinate data.
However, when the coordinate data representing a character pattern is all stored, a massive amount of data needs to be stored. In order to reduce the data amount, the coordinate data is transformed to a character code by using a character recognition technique. However, the coordinate data representing an original handwritten character pattern cannot be reproduced from the character code transformed in this way. Therefore, it is not possible to output a particular character pattern, such as a handwritten one in its original appearance, once the original handwritten character pattern has been transformed to the character code.
It would be desirable to prevent the inconvenience which occurs if the information of the input handwritten character is all stored as coordinate data, as described earlier, because the amount of data is considerable and a large memory capacity is required, resulting in cost increase of the apparatus.